Beating The System? 20% Of Taxpayers Admit Cheating, Poll Finds

WASHINGTON — One in five Americans admit cheating on their income taxes, and most say they do it because the system is unfair, according to an Internal Revenue Service survey.

But the 2,000 people surveyed said they believe 41 percent of all taxpayers cheat, and speculated the average taxpayer was almost as likely to overstate deductions as underreport income.

Two-thousand people were questioned last summer for the IRS poll conducted by Yankelovich, Skelly and White and published in the April issue of Psychology Today.

Twenty percent of the respondents admitted cheating, with twice as many cheaters saying they underreported their income as overstated their deductions.

Many of those questioned were tolerant of cheating, even if they themselves didn`t cheat, the magazine said.

``Many people who claimed that they did not cheat were willing to condone it,`` Elizabeth Loftus, a psychology professor at the University of Washington at Seattle, wrote in the magazine.

The most common reason given for cheating was that the ``tax system is unfair,`` cited by 25 percent of respondents. Another 23 percent said ``they can get away with it,`` 19 percent said ``everyone else does it,`` 17 percent, ``to beat the system,`` and 15 percent, ``don`t like or can`t control how their money is being spent.``